Conventional storage infrastructures are migrating to support Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) infrastructures as well as internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage infrastructures through a gigabit Ethernet medium. A host server computer in such a system uses two Host Bus Adapters (HBAs)—one for coupling to the SAS storage device and another for coupling to the iSCSI connected storage devices. Using two HBAs on two different PCI slots consumes processor computational resources of the host server computer. In order to manage SAS devices as well as iSCSI devices, separate management applications and failover drivers are needed. Such duplication can complicate the management process as well as drain processor computational resources of a host server computer.
It would be desirable to implement a method and/or system for implementing a serial attached SCSI (SAS) and/or Internet small computer system interface (iSCSI) controller through a single host bus adapter (or controller drive interface).